On 18-19 November, the Council of Europe TJENI project held an insightful hackathon titled “Digital Future of Justice”, focused on the development of digital solutions to streamline the indexing and categorisation of judicial texts with human rights tags.
The hackathon brought together a diverse group of 29 participants from six teams, made up of students and researchers from Cyprus, Greece, Lithuania, Norway, Poland and Romania. These teams were reinforced by six mentors-experts in technology and law. The participants’ diverse backgrounds in legal tech, software development, machine learning, data science, user experience design and legal expertise catalysed collaborative efforts and fruitful brainstorming sessions.
“It is a really nice competition; we get to know each other and our different backgrounds. I am really excited given that it is my first project related to Artificial Intelligence and I can already see how much I evolve in this combined domain of legal and IT” – Adrian Onacă, participant from Romania, TJENI Hackathon
Following a demonstration of the six projects developed during the Hackathon, the jury declared Norway as the winner of the competition. The winning project was evaluated on the basis of criteria such as innovation, feasibility, applicability, tool performance, scalability and compliance with data security and privacy standards. Romania and Poland came 2nd and 3rdr espectively.
“I am confident that the solutions to the challenge proposed during the Hackathon can lay the ground for an easier use of case law databases at the national level and for their linking to the relevant human rights standards of the European Court of Human Rights” – Tigran Karapetyan, Head of Transversal Challenges and Multilateral Projects Task Force Division of the Council of Europe, Judge of the TJENI Hackathon
The competition not only encouraged technological ingenuity but also highlighted the pivotal role of multidisciplinary collaboration in developing solutions that uphold human rights within the justice system.
The Council of Europe is committed to creating opportunities for students and researchers to use technology to enhance human rights protection and raise awareness among judges, lawyers, and other legal professionals about the European Convention on Human Rights.
The project “Foster Transparency of Judicial Decisions and Enhancing the National Implementation of the ECHR” is implemented by the Council of Europe and funded by the EEA and Norway Grants Fund for Regional Cooperation.
